Sunday, October 6, 2013

Welcome our guest, Jeri Westerson!

Welcome our guest, Jeri Westerson!

Noir and hard-boiled fiction seem to be in Jeri
Westerson’s blood. She was born and bred on the mean streets of Los Angeles,
inhaling smog and enduring earthquakes. Raised in a household that not only
embraced history, but medieval English history specifically, Jeri came by her
interest in all things medieval honestly. She worked in a bevy of careers prior
to setting her sights on becoming a novelist. Would-be actress, graphic artist,
theology teacher, tasting host and tour guide for a winery, and newspaper
reporter were among them. She wanted to create her own brand of medieval
mystery, and combined the concept of medieval mystery with hard-boiled
detective fiction into what she calls “Medieval Noir.”

The Alchemy of Medieval Cookery

By Jeri Westerson

My newest medieval mystery SHADOW OF THE ALCHEMIST, with
hunk-on-a-stick disgraced knight turned detective Crispin Guest, hits the
shelves. While researching for this book, I had to delve into the art of alchemy,
how it was done, who were the practitioners, and what did it all mean. Writing
about a different place and time comes with its own sets of problems, including
learning what life was like for the everyday person in medieval London. It
includes a lot of hands-on research. And since this blog deals in food, I can
talk about some of my adventures in medieval cookery.

Cooking is alchemy. Of course it is. And what is alchemy but
transmuting elements into different elements. Cooking is just that. Changing
eggs into a soufflé, for instance. The amalgamation of eggs, flour, and sugar
into a cake. We know how we do it now, but how did they do it then?

My books are set in the fourteenth century, and it just so
happens that in about this time, cookbooks were coming into their own.
Cookbooks started out life in the Middle East as a physicians’ prescription
book, with folk remedies and potions to heal the sick. Eventually, they became
recipes for the table. But even so, these were not the kind of cookbooks that included
medieval meatloaf. These cookbooks didn’t have recipes that everyone already
knew how to cook. These were for manor houses and palaces, showcasing the very
special top-of-the-line recipes. How to cook a Cockatrice, for instance, that
mythological creature part bird and part beast. (How do you cook a cockatrice, you ask? Veeeery

carefully.)

Still want to make that Cockatrice? (Oh Mom, we had that last night!) Here’s the Middle English
version:

Cokentrice

Take a capoun and
skald hym, and draw hym clene, and smyte hem a-to in the waste overthwart. Take
a pige and skald hym, and draw hym in the same manner and smyte hem also in the
waste. Take a nedyl and threde, and sewe the fore partye of the capoun to the
after parti of the pygge and fore partye of the pigge to the hinder party of
the capoun, and then stuffe hem as thou stuffiest a pigge. Putte hem on a spete
and roste hym an than he is y-now, dore hem with yolkys of eyroun and pouder
ginger and safroun, thenne wyth the ius of percely with-owte and than serve it
forth for a ryal mete.

Did you get all that?
Basically, cut a chicken and a pig in half at the waist, sew the front
half of one to the back half of the other, stuff them, and roast them on a
spit. Glaze them with eggs yolks and powdered ginger and parsley and serve as a
royal feast. Sometimes the feathers would be carefully put back on the bird, as
when one serves swan. That makes a really good presentation. Don’t forget to
stretch your meal with Cockatrice Helper!

I have to admit, I’ve never made this, but I sure want to. Don’t
you?

Medieval fare made good use of seasonal foods. Sort of had
to with limited ways of food preservation (there was smoking, salting,
pickling, and preserving like jams.) But mostly, you had to rely on what was
growing and what was able to be caught or bought in terms of meat, and they ate
a LOT of meat. But only if you were a middle class merchant or craftsman or
higher. Poorer folk relied on lots of pottages or soups and stews, with lots of
low-brow ingredients like dried peas and beans. Which was technically healthier
than all that bleached bread and meat.

Milk wasn’t really drunk. It was far too valuable for that.
They made it into cheese, something that could last for days and weeks. Fruit
juices likewise were used for cooking and sweetening other food (sugar was
expensive. If you had a sweet tooth, you used fruit or homegrown honey from
your own bees.) Thirsty? You had to rely on water, but mostly ales, which were
sweeter then. No hops yet, at least in England. They looked down their nose at
that. Hops served as a bittering agent but it also preserved the beer. Without
it, you had to drink that beer up mighty quick, within days of brewing.

Bread, then as now, was a staple, and baked every day.
Sometimes you brought your loaves to a baker and, for a fee, he would bake it
for you, using his expensive fuel to keep ovens warm all day.

One common recipe included stuffed loaves, called rastons, which
I have made.

RASTONS

1 large round loaf

½ cup butter

1 tablespoon poppy or crushed fennel seeds

·Cut the top off a loaf and save for a lid. Scoop
out the bread from the loaf and crumble.

·Melt butter in a heavy skillet and add the
crumbs. Toss so that they are evenly coated. Mix with seeds. Replace all into
the loaf and put on the “lid”.

·Bake in moderate oven before serving. Use your
hands to pull bits away.

Almond milk was another common fare. It was used as a
dipping sauce for bread, a thickener for sauces, and a flavoring agent for meat
and fruit dishes. It’s funny that in our diet culture today, almond milk is
back on the store shelves as a substitute for milk for the lactose intolerant
or for folks who want to cut carbs from the diet. I have used this for a
dipping sauce for medieval parsnip fritters.

ALMOND MILK

½ cup blanched almonds

1 cup boiling water

1 ½ teaspoon of honey

Dash of salt

·To blanch almonds, boil the nuts in water for 2
to 3 minutes. Drain. Pour cold water over them. Pop off the skins.

·Grind almonds in ye olde blender or mortar,
adding a few tablespoons of ice water during the process to prevent the paste
from becoming oily.

·Add honey and salt to 1 cup of boiling water and
dissolve. Pour liquid over almonds. Allow to soak for about ten minutes. Strain
out almonds if a smooth texture is desired. (Or go to Trader Joe’s and get
almond meal. Skip the blanching process and go directly to adding boiling
water. No need to strain.)

Any of these are wonderful for a medieval party, and easy to
do. The amazing alchemy that happens when you cook proves the magic of the
process. A lot easier to turn almonds into a sauce than lead into gold, but it
is no less mystical.

---

Jeri works her alchemy on her medieval mysteries. The latest
is SHADOW OF THE ALCHEMIST. www.JeriWesterson.com.

You can see her series book trailer and discussion
guides on her website.

Fantastic post, Jeri, and congrats on the return of your brilliant knight Crispin in Shadow of the Alchemist. You're so right about cooking being alchemy, especially when we attempt new "prescriptions"--sometimes we get gold; sometimes...not so much. That Middle English recipe for "Cokentrice" is hilarious. (Cokentrice Helper indeed.) Now you've got me wondering what two carcasses I can sew together to scare the kids at Halloween...Fish Head on a Cornish Hen maybe? (Yeah, I know. After all the trouble, who would eat it?!)

I had no idea they made almond milk back then. Fascinating. I am not the cook in our house; DH is (thank God, as he's really great. I'm great at dish washing). But anything about the medieval era is very interesting to us both. It must be fun when you uncover a particularly elusive fact while doing your research for the books. Can't wait for your latest! Mary Keesling

I knew I forgot something when I served swan last night -- the feathers! How stupid of me. I'm glad I don't have to cook swans. Fascinating post, Jeri. Is it just me or does the Cockentrice remind anyone else of Turducken? Apparently we've been joining meats for a long, long time! Slightly different technique, of course.

I, too, thought of the combined turkey duck combo when I read this fascinating post. I stuff bread a lot, but I use a meat filling and then cover the top with slices of bacon which bake to a crisp and flavor the entire bread throughout. The meatloaf inside is moist with his hint of bacon from the bread crust. Not sure how medieval it is but it sure has been a recipe made by our family for many, many years. Loved the post. Thank you for entertaining and enlightening us all.